Feedback from the CC Global Summit

This year our new Public Lead Mandy Henk and I were lucky enough to both attend the Creative Commons Global Summit in Toronto at the end of April (after which I went exploring Canada for a few weeks, which is why this blog post is a bit late). It was the first time either of us had been to the annual summit and we had a great time. It was lovely to also see CCANZ Advisory Panel members Paula Eskett of CORE Education and Wayne Mackintosh of the OERF there, who we don’t get to hang out with very often since we’re all based in different cities. So Aotearoa was very well represented (even if they did leave us off the world map!).

Because CCANZ has only two staff, one of the biggest benefits of the summit for me was getting to spend time with people who are also doing my job. Of course we have mailing lists and occasional video chats, but nothing’s quite the same as hanging out in person. It was also great to be able to chat with colleagues from CC Australia, who we really don’t see often enough given how (relatively!) close we are. There’s an enormous psychological benefit to realising that lots of other people are also working on the same problems, and that we have such an impressive international community to draw upon.

Some highlights for me were hearing Ashe Dryden speak about the fundamental importance of diversity, and hearing Sarah Jeong talk about truth and journalism in the era of fake news. My talk, about the achievements of CCANZ and lessons learned, seemed to be well received. CC’s annual State of the Commons report was launched during the summit, which features NZ’s very own GeoNet as a case study. There are now about 1.2 billion CC-licensed works in the world!